This idea is so wrong, it's just right. Pat Ganahl and the crew from HOT ROD laid the foundation for this story way back in 1987 when they turned a behemoth Cadillac Coupe De Ville into Swiss cheese to find out how much quicker it would run at the dragstrip. The story was called "Caddy Hack," it was published in the Feb. '87 issue of HRM, and we still get mail about it. Then we ripped off that idea in the Apr. '97 issue by doing the exact same thing with a big Pontiac, calling it PontiHack. The mayhem and destruction that ensued during both stories obviously struck a chord with our readers, so Freiburger and Kinnan cooked up a similar plan to put a cheap car on a severe slice-and-dice diet with reciprocating saw blades, sledgehammers, and hole saws. While Caddy Hack and PontiHack were about the quarter-mile, this time we were going around corners.

2/28HOT ROD sidekick Chad Reynolds delivered the freshly rescued '85 Corvette, a HazMat suit, and a tetanus shot to our shop a few weeks before the track test. Sadly, the trailer was in better shape than the car. This rare unit is one of 39,729 built!

The Victim
The hate mail from Corvette fans is going to flow like a set of Big Chiefs after they see what we did to this Doug Nash 4+3-shifted '85 model. In our defense, we have legitimate reasons for cutting it up. This car was in no way a candidate for a concours restoration. The interior was at one time flooded, and decade-long desert hibernation cracked most of the plastic parts. The exterior needed thousands of dollars in paint, bodywork, glass, and seals to be made new again. This Corvette had a price tag below two grand, and even if we did restore it, it would be more valuable as a race car than a show car. And in fact, our plan is to take this thing much further than what you see here and to race it safely while spending as little as possible. We'll end up with a car like one you've never seen before. But that's a different story for a later time.

Meanwhile, we had so little invested in this bucket that we didn't feel bad about cutting it up for the good of mankind and the expansion of our racing knowledge. The C4 is no flyweight, and it has plenty of areas where we could easily trim the fat and make it quicker. It could certainly stand to lose a few pounds to make up for the weak-suck, iron head, 350ci TPI engine that's sitting under the heavy fiberglass hood. The suspension is a good design with IRS and transverse-mounted fiberglass leaf springs that work well on a road course, making this the perfect low-budget test car.

3/28The Vette's stock 230hp TPI engine didn't run due to a dead fuel pump. We initially got it running by spraying carb cleaner in the throttle-body just long enough to realize that the electric fan didn't work and the starter wouldn't stop cranking after the engine was fired. Beating on the starter stopped it temporarily. We went to RockAuto.com for an electric fan, a Ram clutch, a starter, and gaskets for a swap to a carb. Once those were in place, the small-block hit on all eight cylinders and never let us down. Then again, we didn't bother wiring the gauges, so if something was going wrong, we didn't know it. Or really care.

The Plan
Like HRM's previous two hack stories-and the several other knockoffs in other magazines-the simple goal here is to gauge exactly how much improvement in performance can be had from weight reduction. In the case of Caddy Hack, we took a 6,780-pound car that ran 17.22 at 80 mph and turned it into a 2,900-pound car that ran 13.55 and 100 mph. But weight reduction also has road course benefits: lighter cars accelerate quicker, stop quicker, and have the potential for better lateral handling. However, weight is not the only player, as we found out. There are some real tech lessons here.

Perhaps the best explanation of our antics, though, is something every hot rodder can relate to: There's just something visceral about grabbing hold of a power tool and using it for senseless vehicular destruction.

Prep For The Slaughter

The Driver

Although it looks that way, our plan wasn't just about making sparks and destroying beat-down body parts. We wanted to find out exactly what would happen to the handling characteristics of our guinea pig once the tires got hot and weight began dropping rapidly. Would it still stick in a corner? Would it get sketchy on high-speed sections of the track or would the car just run faster and quicker while looking cooler than GM originally envisioned? We rented out the third-mile oval course at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale to find out and then hired a real driver to make repeatable laps around a short road course we set up with cones on the infield. Luis Martinez Jr. is a hot shoe on the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West circuit, and he took much of the human error out of our testing by piloting the Corvette with the deft touch of a true professional. When the car got lighter and unruly, he made sure the laps stayed consistent so our test was on point. His primary sponsor, King Taco, also provided lunch to our wrecking crew, so that was another bonus in his favor.

6/28

Our test plan was straightforward: We'd weigh the car using four-corner race scales and then make a few laps to find out how quick it ran in stock form. Then we'd start hacking, keeping track of the weight of each part removed and noting the effects on handling and lap times. The Corvette was a svelte 3,243 pounds in stock form with the 20-gallon fuel cell topped off and approximately 5 gallons of dead gas in the stock tank.

As our first mod, we jacked up the car, tossed a pair of MechaniComfort work mats on the ground, and promptly cut off the resonators and empty spare tire mount, which knocked 39 pounds from the total weight of the Vette. Martinez went two tenths of a second quicker. The Vette still sounded like a sewing machine on steroids.

Thankfully, there were enough shims between the front control arms and their mounts to remove to decrease the amount of positive camber, and in the rear, camber changes came from a simple cam bolt adjustment on the lower control arms. We adjusted the front suspension first, which dropped the lap time down to 28.4 seconds. Then we adjusted the rear suspension and Martinez flew around the track in 27.9 seconds, which was our best pass yet. Still, he said the rearend would not stay hooked up in the corners, and the squealing tires and smoke show confirmed it. And don't forget that we had no clue where the alignment really was. It was just eyeballed.

Since we were out of suspension adjustments and there was no easy way to decrease the spring rate of the transverse leaf springs without cutting them up, we resorted to lowering the pressure from 40 to 30 psi in the rear tires. This reduced oversteer a little, giving Martinez a bit more confidence and resulting in our best lap of the day: 27.6 seconds. We felt like heroes taking the ugly chick to prom and being crowned king.

Was it worth it?
Is it wrong to take a perfectly good car that was once somebody's pride and joy and turn it into a go-kart? Not when they leave it in the desert for dead. Is it rude to destroy the best styling ideas General Motors could come up with in 1985 for its flagship performance car just to prove a point? Not when you've got less than 2,500 bucks invested in the project. We learned a lot about the good and evil of extreme automotive dieting thanks to our cheap steed. Plus, this turned into more of an alignment and tuning lesson than we thought. The Vette Hack also induced us to take this project a few steps further. We think we can lighten the car even more, perhaps dipping below the 2,000-pound mark, and with a few suspension tweaks, it will handle better than ever. We also think that with another 2,500 bucks sunk into this pile for stickier tires, a full 'cage, and safety equipment, it will smoke a brand-new Corvette at the dragstrip and on the road course. Think we're wrong? Keep your eyes peeled for the next installment of the Vette Hack saga.

We'd like to thank Martinez for piloting the car without fear, Harbor Freight for the tools that wouldn't quit, RockAuto.com for the replacement parts, MechaniComfort for the cushions that kept the ground soft while we worked, King Taco for the awesome grub that kept us going, and Bob Klein at Toyota Speedway and Doug Stokes at Irwindale for not shutting us down when we made a mess at the track.